


The Wide, Wide Worlds of Pokemon

by GaBeRock



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pokemon GO
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Real World, Feudalism, Gen, Original Character(s), Politics, Satire, Sengoku-punk, Transformation, Vignette
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:10:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 15,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26170135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GaBeRock/pseuds/GaBeRock
Summary: Have you ever wondered what you’d do if you could talk to the pokemon inside your video game console?Could you image the life of a young growlithe in a sengoku-punk world?What if you-- and everyone else on planet earth-- were suddenly turned into pokemon without explanation?These pages contain the beginnings of stories. Their remainders are left as exercise for the readers’ imaginations.(OR: A lazy author dumps out stories that got started, but not finished.)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	1. Pokemon Go to the Polls

“Pokemon Go to the Polls!” said Hillary Clinton.

And so they did, to the utter surprise and bafflement of a world that had previously considered them the fabrications of a Japanese video game.

Election day proved beyond all doubt that the moniker “electoral circus” was well applied, as out of nowhere hundreds of millions of not-quite-animals showed up to cast their ballots. And yet, they had their voter identification, valid addresses, and proof of citizenship, so what else could we have done but let them participate in our democracy?

Of course, many disputed the validity of the election, given almost half its voters didn’t seem to exist prior to it being held. But the economists, for once, came through. It all made sense, they claimed. The Laffer curve, the invisible hand of the market, trickle down economics-- all ideas that made perfect sense in theory, but in practice had failed, for the reason that theory had never managed to account for a few hundred million pokemon participating in our economy, just out of sight.

Many doubted the economists, of course, but the population’s aversion to math kept us from checking their math too closely. And anyways, it didn’t seem particularly prudent to tell, say, a Charizard that they didn’t have the right to vote.

(Ironically, relatively few Charizards actually chose to vote. Most were content to drink beer, mow their lawns, and proclaim to all in earshot they they “just wanted to grill.”)

Other Pokemon were not so apolitical.

En masse, the Sentret, voted for Donald Trump, as did the Gurdurr and Timburr. Watching out for foreigners and building walls were very much in their wheelhouse.

The Nidoqueen, meanwhile, corralled their evolutionary line to vote for Hillary. Something about ruthless political cunning just drew them in.

Other pokemon, of course, had their own pet issues and deep-seated beliefs, some of which were familiar to human (for example, the struggle between the Coalossal mining magnates and the Venusaur solar-energy proponents) while others were utterly baffling (who know Magnemite cared so much about the layout of buried cables?)

Regardless, fewer than 3% of them bothered voting for third parties, as even those with the strangest moralities didn’t want to throw their vote away.

Ultimately, the election favored Hillary Clinton, as her prescient get-out-the-vote attempt had been what had motivated Pokemon into revealing themselves in the first place.

Donald Trump got the last laugh, however, as an army of Gumshoos was swift to declare him their eternal leader and install him as the dictator of Venezuela.

Tim Kaine, meanwhile, stayed out of sight and out of mind. So utterly bland and forgettable his contemporaries simply forgot about him. History, on the other hand, would remember him as the first Zoroark Vice President. Though, unless the CIA’s archives are unsealed, we’ll never know if he was the last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This work will contain story fragments from ideas I was interested enough to write a few hundred or thousand words for, but for a variety of reasons didn't quite pass my standards for "interesting enough to turn into a full story." I'm a little responsive to begging, in case a bunch of people tell me they *really* like one of the story fragments I post, but otherwise, if you want to see one of these stories continued, your best bet is to adopt it yourself.
> 
> Next: A boy, his gameboy, and the pocket universe contained therein.


	2. Tokomak Trouble

The image focuses on a young man. He sits on his bed, an ordinary four-poster affair. The wall behind him is blank, although the remnants of tape and sticky tack show where posters had once been hung up.   
  
He begins to speak.   
  
“I have a special ability. I can talk to pokemon. Sounds awesome, right? Well, there’s one significant caveat. That being, that Pokemon is a franchise first released by Game Freak in 1996.”   
  
“Everyone I ever told thought I was crazy. So I stopped telling people. In elementary school, I was that weird kid obsessed with his imaginary friends. It might have been okay in kindergarten, but while everyone else grew up, I was still talking to my game console like it could talk back. By the time middle school started, I thought I was crazy too.”   
  
The young man clears his throat, obviously uncomfortable to be saying this, but perhaps also a little relieved.   
  
“So I open up my gameboy advance for what I thought would be the last time. I tell my team that I can't play with them any more. I set down my console, and resolve to be perfectly, absolutely, normal. And for a week, it almost works. But I’d always been isolated from my classmates, and my social skills aren't the greatest. I start getting bullied; nothing serious, nothing physical, but one day, I duck out of class and run home crying. I turn on my gameboy. I apologize for everything, and my team forgives me. We have a long, honest talk, and at the end, as sort of a joke, I ask if they’re willing to help me with my math homework.”   
  
“Of course, none of these guys have received any formal education, but they’re pretty smart anyways. So they say they’re game. I start teaching them. It becomes routine. Every night, we have a few battles, and work on homework. Somewhere along the line, though, Blaster-- my Alakazam-- starts correcting me. I stop needing a calculator, because he can multiply twelve digit numbers in a matter of seconds. That’s when it really starts to sink in that I’m not crazy. I considered the possibility that I was some sort of schizophrenic savant, but I did other tests to confirm what was happening.”

“Still, long habit kept me from telling anyone. Until now.”

The young man pulls out a red and white orb. A pokeball. He clicks a button on its front. A red beam shoots out, and an enormous yellow rat-- a Raichu-- materializes. It squeaks, and the young man elbows it in a jocular fashion. There's a crooked grin on his face, now.

“I know there’s been a lot of panic in the last few days. Lots of questions, but no answers. I have--” he hesitates, searching for words “-- a part of the puzzle.”

“It all started a few weeks ago.”

~oOo~

A shooting star flashes across the horizon, leaving glimmers in its wake.

“Game Freak” appears, white letter on a blue field.

The familiar chiptune jingle begins to play, before I unceremoniously cut it off by hastily pressing the ‘b’ button.

It takes a few more seconds for the game to load up. My avatar is at the same place I left it-- just outside of bill’s lab. I check my pokeballs. All six have corrupted data; a sign that my pokemon are out and about somewhere. I go inside, for no particular reason.

_ "Feel like checking out some of my rare Pokémon on my PC? Go on, check out my PC." _

Bill repeats the same, rote dialogue as always. I’d long since found out it was only the pokemon that could “think”, but for some reason I kept thinking maybe this time I would be wrong.

It had to be eerie, for them: cities filled with empty husks, enormous, but largely empty structures.

Of course, according to them, that was perfectly normal. I was the weird one, for coming from a world where buildings had to be built, and humans weren’t soulless near-statues.

“Is anyone around?” I asked. I didn’t have the gameboy microphone, but somehow my pokemon could hear me anyways.

“Hey, Z-man, over here!” And of course, it turn, I could hear them. Not through the crappy gameboy speakers, but as if they stood right next to me. Or in this case, as if they stood about six feet in front of me.

I move my avatar forwards, step by step.

“Warmer, warmer, there!”

Raichu’s voice gets louder as I get closer. He doesn’t show up on the screen, but I can hear the click-clack of his nails as he skitters excitedly on the wooden floor of bill’s lab.

It’s a little bit like being in a very dim room. My eyes aren’t super useful, but my hearing tells me everything I need to know.

My avatar stands right in front of one of Bill’s teleporters. I’d suspected they’d be here. “Blaster, you around here?”

“Yup.” The voice comes from above me; the Alakazam is likely floating above the machine, performing fine telekinesis.

“Have you guys made any progress?”

“Oh yeah, like you wouldn’t believe!” I can tell Raichu’s bursting at the seems to tell me what they’ve discovered.

“So?”

“Well, after you told us all that stuff about stacy currents--”

“--AC”

“And ind-whatsit--”

“--inductance”

“I had this great idea about hooking up the magnet donut to the my tail to--”

“ **\--tokamak** , you irritating little rodent. Shut up and let me explain this.” Alakazam, fed up with Raichu’s poor attempt at explaining the situation, intervenes.

“As Raichu was trying to say, after you bought me that physics textbook, I was able to discern the underlying geometry of the spacetime manifold generated by the antimatter-reaction catalysing tokamak by running electric fields through the intervening space.”

“I made those electric fields, by the way. Just thought you’d like to know.”

I laugh. Raichu never gets tired of ribbing Blaster. “So you guys are one step closer to getting it operational?”

“Actually, we are several steps closer to getting it operational. All we need to do now it--”

For a while, Alakazam babbles incomprehensibly abstruse engineering and physics jargon. I ignore him and check my phone instead. (He’s really doing this for his own benefit anyways. He calls it the “rubber Farfetch’d technique.”) When he winds down and finishes his rant, I ask him, “So what do you still need?”

He takes some time to consider the question. “I still l need to get my paws on a few mechanical odds and ends, but currently my main blockers are that I still need a way to deliver about two megavolts at a hundred and twenty thousand amps for three consecutive seconds, and that I still need to find some sort of dimensional anchor.”

“I can handle the first problem!” Raichu boasted. “Though I will need a little bit of help from my friends.”

“And as for the second problem, I might have a lead.”

“That’s awesome! Maybe figuring this out will finally shed some light on why your world is so weird. How long do you guys think you’ll take to finish this up?”

Alakazam verbally shrugs. He probably also physically shrugs, but of course I can’t see him to verify my suspicion. “If everything goes well? Maybe a week.”

I laugh. “You’re always just a week away, aren’t you?”

~oOo~

The raichu jabs the young man in his side, good-naturedly.

“Hey!”

The raichu chitters, briefly, and he rolls his eyes. “I know, I know, you  _ told _ me so.”

He looks back at the camera. “Anyways, a week passes. I forget about the conversation. We battle the league a few times because Raichu wants to practice his thunder. We take a cruise on the SS Anne, do a bit of item hunting, blah blah blah. Just dumb stuff to fill up the time while Blaster’s cooped up in the lab. Then one afternoon, I come home from school, and see  _ that _ .”

The young man gestures outside his window, looking away from the camera. It’s possible he’s oblivious to the fact that the camera isn’t positioned at an angle to see whatever he’s pointing at, or maybe he just expects the viewer to know.

“Yeah, you better believe I was eating crow.”

“But hey, you gotta admit-- this might just be for the best.”

The crooked grin is back. He gets up to turn off the camera. Raichu leans over and waves.

Six pokeballs are attached to his belt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought, "what if the main character could talk to pokemon?" which was a horribly unoriginal thought. Then I thought, "what if the main character could talk to pokemon... except they don't exist outside of his videogame?" That got me about a chapter in, but I couldn't come up with a conflict.
> 
> Next: A world in crisis, but for vastly different reasons than our own.


	3. The Change - 1

Civilization is saved, and nobody notices.

Amidst the sirens and alarms, the blinking lights and blaring klaxons, Nuclear armageddon is averted by the barest happenstance. One ICBM operator turns his key. The other, turned into a Meowstic, a feline barely two feet tall, cannot reach the keyhole.

By the time he figures out how to use his psychic powers to telekinetically manipulate the key, the alarms have stopped blaring, and the order to stand down has come through secure channels.

~oOo~

Light.

A tunnel.

The afterlife?

I open my eyes. My surroundings are pitch black. I don’t freak out-- yet.

I feel pin pricks as my claws dig into my paw pads.

What.

_ What. _

I flail wildly, as I tangle myself up in some sort of shroud. The distinctive sound of tearing cloth mixes with my confused vocalizing. Not screaming, exactly, but the kind of squeaks and grunts you make an hour into trying to troubleshoot a software issue.

Several disjointed scenarios race through my mind. Reincarnation? A nightmare? Insanity? A part of me is annoyed that I’m panicking. The rest of me panics without reservation.

As I struggle against whatever holds me captive, a thick mane of hair falls off of my face. I can once again see the ceiling, dimly lit by the street light filtering through the blinds.

This takes my panic from an 8 to a solid 6, and I regain some level of coherency. My eyes focus, and I realize I’m still in my dorm room.

On my roommate’s bed, a dark, indistinct blob groans while turning over.

I take my glasses off.

On my roommate’s bed is what is unmistakably a Noivern-- a batlike dragon (or dragonlike bat?), dark grey and purple.

“Dude? Are you okay?” Richie asks blearily.

“I’m fine,” I reply reflexively.

“Great, then shut the fuck up. I’ve got an eight o’clock final.” He turns back over, and goes back to sleep.

Panic level down to 3, I finally start trying to figure out what’s going on. Item of interest number one: how the hell did I take off my glasses with paws?

~oOo~

Eventually, I remember what woke me up in the first place-- my bad habit of drinking lots of water right before bed.

The feeling of my clawed toes scraping on the rungs of my lofted bed is bizarre and unsettling. I hyperfocus on each movement of the alien digits.

At some point, I realize I’m missing a finger on each hand. Up until that point, my arms had been moving on autopilot. I’m briefly paralyzed. I count my fingers one-by-one. Six fingers, two dewclaws.

Feeling my panic rise back up, I try to focus on something completely unrelated. Item of interest number one: what the hell is up with my nose? I can see it even if I’m not cross eyed, which is incredibly distracting, now that I’m focused on it.

Before I know it, I’m on the ground. I land, light on me feet. My elongated legs absorb the impact with ease.

I’m starting to get the hang of my new body. All the muscle memory is there; just, translated somehow into my new form. As long as I don’t think too hard, I move on autopilot.

Though, ‘not thinking too hard’ is easier for some actions that others. The less said about my trip to the bathroom, the better.

At some point, I realize I no longer need my cane. Something that hasn’t been true since sixth grade.

With the fur on my paws still damp from my attempt to wash my ‘hands’, I’m hesitant to use my laptop, so I take some time to think.

Instinctively, the first thing I want to do is run outside and try to use an attack. The old, childish desire to have immense magical powers at my beck and call; to lay waste to all before me.

Pragmatism wins out. I don’t know nearly enough about what’s going on.

It could be that I was transported in an alternate universe where everyone had always been Pokémon, and Game Freak made a fighting game where you trained teams of “Humans” to fight each other. It could be that I was still in my own universe, but the only people turned into pokemon were me and my roommate.

It could be a localized effect, or a global one.

Or I could just be nuts.

I’d long been of the opinion that a delusion indistinguishable from real life _ is  _ real life, but had never been in a position to put that belief to the test.

What could I do to convince myself this really was real? What would I do if I found out it wasn’t? I at least knew I wasn’t dreaming.

My paws were still damp, but dry enough that I could use my laptop.

I waited anxiously for it to boot up. Out of habit, I navigated to Reddit.

The euphoria of being not-crazy mixed with a sense of dawning horror.

If there were any humans left, I wasn’t finding them there.

~oOo~

One of my roommate's wings handles a spoon, delivering oatmeal from his bowl to his mouth. The other wing holds his phone, which he looks at while idly eating breakfast.

I’m flabbergasted.

“Do you-- do you  _ seriously  _ not notice what’s going on?”

“I notice.”

“Holy shit man, you’re a fucking Noivern!”

“And you’re a Zoroark.”

He yawns.

I briefly wonder if I’m going crazy. If the news articles were lying and reddit was playing a practical joke on me. Were we always pokemon? Was being human just a delusion or fever dream? I decide to ask him. “Were you-- were you a Noivern before today?”

“No. Of course not.” He gives me a flat look. If looks could talk, this one would say “dipshit.”

“They how are you not freaking out!?”

He shrugs. “I’ve got an 8AM final.”

“What, you think anyone’s going to bother to show up?”

“Either the professor shows up, and I fail if I don’t, or he doesn’t, and I don’t lose anything. Anyways, I’m already awake.” He frowns at his cup of coffee. In a quieter voice, he says, “and if I didn’t have something to distract me, I’d probably go insane.”

I don’t respond verbally. The sombre look we trade is enough.

I try to put on some pants, but give up quickly; I’ve lost almost half a foot in height (although if bulbapedia is any indication, I’m pretty tall for a Zoroark.) Instead, I put on some shorts. They threaten to fall off, so I fasten them around my waist with a belt.

A brief look in the mirror confirms my suspicions-- I look positively ridiculous. I decide not to put on a shirt; no point compounding the stupidity.

Wallet, phone, keys, and pocket knife in my pockets, I finally venture outside of my dorm room. The hallways are empty, but I can hear muffled freakouts happening in other rooms.

Midway through my walk down the stairs, the relative peace is interrupted by an ear-splitting shriek. On a higher floor, one of the windows shatters.

Finally outside, my thick black fur blown about by the early morning breeze, I’m at a loss for what to do.

I can see a few other people wandering around in similar states of confusion and distress.

One stands apart, figuratively and literally: an Alolan Raichu on the tips of its toes. I wonder what she’s doing.

My question is soon answered.

The world flashes pure white, and I stumble back. When I reopen my eyes, the Raichu is on her back, laughing helplessly. The area around her is scorched black. “Holy shit, that was awesome!” She yells, then resumes giggling.

For lack of anything better to do, I approach. “What was that, Thunder?”

She takes notice. “Naw, Thunder’s a little risky, on account of being so inaccurate. That was just a Thunderbolt.”

“Hell of an attack,” I said, impressed.

“What about you?” She asked. “Tried any attacks yet?”

“Uh, no, not yet.”

She nodded. “Okay. Well, as a Noivern, you probably know-- uh, gust? Wing attack? Maybe Aerial Ace? I’ll have to check--”

“Wait, Noivern?” I blink, and look back down at myself. I can still see my black fur and claws, but overlayed are the translucent, batlike wings of a Noivern.

I pinch myself, and the illusion shatters.

“Neat,” remarks the girl.

I re-assume the mental state I’d been in just after her Thunderbolt. Yellow fur shimmers into place around my own.

“Neat!”

This time, I can dismiss the illusion without pinching myself. I have an inkling of how the ability works, but for now it’s mostly just instinctual.

For a little while after, we stand in awkward silence. I’m flipping my illusion on and off, and the girl is thinking about who knows what.

Finally, she speaks up. “You might want to step back a bit, I don’t have very good aim with this.”

I comply; no sense getting shocked.

The panic fades as I watch her (from a safe distance, of course.)

Yeah, the world has gone crazy. But it’s not like everything is worse now. I feel a familiar itching in the soles of my feet, one I’ve felt for years, but not been able to act on. At least, without shooting pains going all the way up my spine.

I want to run. So I do.

~oOo~

A news broadcast.

A Watchdog holds the microphone. He’s chosen to wear a suit, although it of course looks ridiculous on his prairie-dog like body.

“...President Trump has so far declined to make a public appearance, but the Secretary of Homeland Security, John F. Kelly, will be speaking on behalf of the executive branch.”

The press pool, depleted as it is by no-show reporters, breaks out into murmuring as Kelly reveals himself. The secretary is a Flareon. Large for his species, but still short compared to many other fully evolved pokemon.

There’s an underlying note of hysteria-- to see such a powerful man reduced to a three foot tall, bright red-orange canid is simultaneously hilarious and terrifying. The camera microphone picks up a muttered reference to “Clifford the Big Red Dog.”

The secretary coughs into the microphone. When the murmurs fail to fully abate, he bursts into flame.

The crowd shuts up.

The fire extinguishes, and he begins his speech.

“The United--”

He adjusts his stance, having a little trouble getting his muzzle lined up to the microphone.

“The United States, its people and its government, are in shock. Not in a hundred, or a thousand, or even a million years could we predict anything remotely like this would happen. And I’ll-- I’ll be blunt. We don’t know why this happened. We don’t know who or what caused it. And we’ve only just confirmed the scale of this event.”

The secretary looks nothing like he used to, but his voice is crystal clear-- a perfect match for every prior recording of him.

“Everyone. Yes, everyone, without exception, has been turned into what is known as a ‘Pokémon’--” (he pronounces this ‘Poke-ee-mon’, which is a fair approximation, but not quite on the mark) “--which are a kind of character from a popular Japanese video game franchise.

“This situation is terrifying. We understand that. But to the citizens of this great nation, I must ask of you: Don’t Panic.”

Some of the reporters chuckle. Kelly smiles, revealing the reference to be intentional.

“We are doing everything we can to get to the bottom of this. It doesn’t matter if this phenomenon is extraterrestrial, paranormal, religious, or what have you. We are exploring every possible avenue to find out what caused this, and how to fix it. Our diplomats are in contact with the Japanese government and the Nintendo and Game Freak companies-- the creators of Pokemon. We are mobilizing every asset available to us, including the military, NASA, and the American public university system.”

“So for now, let’s all do our best to keep society running. The president has declared the remainder of today to be a federal holiday. I encourage everyone not performing emergency functions to take the chance to meet with your families and neighbors, to help them through this crisis, and to seek their support should they need it. To our firefighters, our policemen and women, to our ambulance drivers and to all of our emergency personnel who have worked through this crisis, you have this nation's deepest gratitude and admiration. And tomorrow, I urge everyone to return to their workplaces and schools, to keep America running, no matter how difficult it seems.”

“We have, collectively and singularity, overcome every single challenge that faced our nation. We will stand, one nation, indivisible, before this one. God bless America!!”

His parting words are met with applause, first scattered, then thundering. Some clap in a traditional manner, bringing together hands or paws. Others stomp the floor, and the rare functionary slaps flippers together.

The camera cuts to a news studio, picture-in-picture still showing the reaction to the speech. The news commentator, a surprisingly thin Slaking, begins to talk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For reference, this was all written 2017ish.


	4. The Change - 2

Fast forward a few days.

The panic has ebbed, but in its place we find dread. The question on everyone’s minds is, “how are we going to deal with this?”

The question on my mind is, “how does Dad fit in that car seat?”

Turned into an Incineroar, he’s both taller and broader than he used to be, and he wasn't a small man to begin with.

The former-man-now-large-bipedal-cat looks uniquely uncomfortable driving his SUV. Luckily, very few other cars are on the highway, so his discomfort isn’t compounded by jackasses swerving wildly between lanes and soccer moms road-raging in their minivans.

Normally he’d bother me with bad jokes and complaints about the other drivers. His mustache would wiggle like an overturned caterpillar, and his thick brogue would be comedically overemphasized. But the air is awkward and silent; in the backseat are three other college students who also live in Omaha. I don’t know any of them, but either they’re no longer capable of driving their own cars, or their parents aren’t.

I miss the bad jokes, despite myself.

To pass the time, I play with my illusion ability. Mile after mile of corn and soybeans pass by as I experiment with different fur colors and textures.

Under regular conditions I’d be on my phone, like the Hariyama in the back seat. My phone is in my backpack, uncharged, as it has been for a few days. Capacitive touch screens don’t work well with fur or keratin.

The ride back home passes slowly. By the time all the other students have been dropped off and I make it home, I’ve moved on to simulating scales and feathers. I hold off on making illusionary skin. the few times I tried, it had looked off, somehow.

Greeting my family, now a small menagerie of different pokemon, I’m heartened to see that our dogs still recognize me. Evidently I still smell the same?

Unpacking goes quickly; I’d donated most of my clothes, seeing as they no longer fit me. I wonder if they’d ever get sold. Few people had decided to go totally nude, but just about nobody still looked good in human clothes.

Speaking about ‘deciding to go totally nude’, here came Richie. Like, I got that shirts didn’t fit over bat wings, but would it kill him to put on some boxers?

No cop cars came screaming around a corner when he landed in my front yard, which evidently he felt vindicated him. “So I don’t know about you, but I’m about ready to go.”

“I  _ literally  _ just got back,” I said, in disbelief.

“Like, literally literally, or figuratively literally?”

“Figuratively literally literally.”

My dogs run out to greet him, woofing and wagging their tails. He takes some time to do the standard baby-talk-to-pets thing, which I don’t begrudge.

When my dogs lose interest, he turns to me and says. “So I’ve found a car for the trip. It’s a big grey van my neighbor’s selling for cheap; doesn’t need to drive when he can teleport.”

“Is it--”

“No, it’s not a VW camper bus.”

“Aww.” I say this mostly for dramatic effect, but I am, in fact, a little disappointed that we couldn’t have our summer road trip in the most iconic summer road trip vehicle ever. “How much?”

Richie grins. “You won’t believe it. Six hundred bucks.”

“What, really? Shit, that’s crazy low. Is it broken down or something?”

“Not as far as I can tell. It’s just that car prices have flatlined-- a lot of people can’t drive them, and even more don’t need them.”

“I can--” I look towards my house “--I’ll have the money ready in a few hours.”

Richie tries to hide it, but I can tell he’s a little crestfallen. I feel bad about brushing him off. I know his relationship with his family isn’t the best. He’s had internships the previous two years of college on the east and west coast respectively, and when his internship for this summer got canceled he jumped at my idea for a road trip.

I fix the situation by inviting him in. “Hey, we’re about ready to have dinner, you wanna eat with us?”

He flashes me a grateful smile, and accepts.

My dad says grace. I bow my head, but I’m not as religious as the rest of my family. Or at all. After my accident, I started doubting God. And a few years on, I stopped believing entirely.

I wonder if he’s in heaven, laughing at me.

I wonder if he’s a big man with a big grey beard, or a grey horse invested with elemental power.

Later, when the plates are cleared and our bellies sated, I head up to my room to grab the money.

My personal stash of money is hidden, not inside my mattress or under a floorboard, but in the same box as my decade-old pokemon card collection. An old habit, stemming from when those cards were my most valuable possessions.

I’d started squirreling away cash a little after the surgery, when my parents were having frank talks about money and the economy and our insurance. Nothing had come of it, thankfully, aside from my father working overtime for a few weeks.

Inside were the earnings from the jobs I’d held throughout middle school, high school, and college. From lemonade stands and mowed lawns; from selling popcorn and tickets at the movie theatre; from mopping supermarket aisles and stocking shelves.

My parents had tried to convince me to put it in a bank, but I’d been adamant about having the cash on hand. It was some sort of totemic protection, I’d felt, against the unexpected and catastrophic.

With the freeze on withdrawing paper money, I’m glad to have it. I take out the full six hundred dollars; Richie was good for half, but didn’t have the cash on hand.

I go downstairs and hand him the money. With a “thanks!” he takes off into the sky. Today, I’d get my things ready. Tomorrow, we’d get the van ready. And then we’d be off on our trip. Or quest, really-- to see if we could find a legendary or mythical pokemon to answer for what happened.

There was no reason to expect we’d succeed, but hey-- there was no guarantee we wouldn’t.

~oOo~

_ May 8th, 2017 _

Le Monde

‘Macron: le premier Pokémon président de la République’

New York Times

‘France Elects Macron President, But Will He Want to Keep the Job?’

Other newspapers, national and international, have similar headlines.

They irritate Macron; a reminder that his plans for domestic reform are now completely overshadowed. Sure, the current situation had given him something of a popularity boost compared to his rival (becoming a short, orange, aquatic weasel hadn’t been in any of his plans, but at least he wasn’t an enormous purple millipede), but he’d have to focus on it to the exclusion of almost all else.

Or maybe…

Yes, he snapped his fingers. That was the way forward. No longer a Jupiterian presidency, but a Napoleonic one. There was a historical precedent for a powerful, if diminutive french leader, and France needed a steady hand at the wheel more than anything else.

France was already under a state of emergency since the November 2015 Paris attacks. He would simply have to seek further emergency powers. Congress would comply; they knew that this country needed extreme action to keep the ship of state afloat.

And perhaps he would have a chance to implement his domestic policy after all.

~oOo~

Elsewhere in France.

The shop is packed. The sign on the door says “closed”, and the shelves are pushed to the side.

Two Grotle-- twin turtles, enormous even before taking into account the shrubs on their backs-- take up much of the space. A Carnivine, green and endowed with a jaw wider than her body, is also a prominent member of the congregation. But of the people in the room, the one with the most commanding presence is, of all things, a Cinccino.

The fluffy grey and white rodent wears a simple t-shirt, cut and folded to not look ridiculous.

There’s a Heliolisk-- a bright yellow lizard, three feet tall-- tied to an exposed pole. The ceiling is exposed, and what natural light comes through it reveals a dingy, disused space.

“Hit her,” Instructs the Cinccino. She has a high-pitched, soprano voice. Airy and unthreatening.

The Carnivine does. A vine whips forwards, leaving a shallow gash on the Heliolisk’s face. She cries out in pain. The gash weeps blood freely onto her miniature hijab. Perhaps it was taken from a doll?

Towards the back, a Vespiquen seems to be ignoring the spectacle, the slender insect on her phone instead of paying attention. Unbeknownst to the rest of the group, she’s surreptitiously filming everything.

“I think,” says the Cinccino, “that I’ve been  _ very _ accommodating. I’m not asking you to give up your god. I’m not forcing you to stop speaking your language. Hell-- I’m even tolerating your accent. And don’t even think of accusing me of being racist.” Here the Cinccino indicates at herself, and then the crowd. She laughs, a jarring action. The crowd laughs with her.

“But  _ this  _ shit--” the Cinccino tugs harshly at the hijab “--is unacceptable. This is a crisis. Everyone’s gotta pitch in to keep the community together. And by wearing that, you’re telling us that you don’t think you’re part of the community. That you’re somehow  _ better _ than us.”

Jeers ring out from the crowd.

“But hey-- I’m not gonna force you to take it off. Liberty comes first, right? So I’ll let you exercise the  _ liberty _ to either stop wearing these stupid rags or get out of our country and go back to where you came from.”

She indicates towards the Carnivine. “Cut her loose.”

The Carnivine whips another vine towards the bound woman. The vine cuts through the rope and the woman’s skin alike. Sobbing, she runs out of the nightclub, to the cheers of many of the onlookers.

Police cars are parked outside. Their occupants, inside.


	5. The Change - 3

It’s not exactly a secret that the Pokemon regions map to real world locations.

Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, and Sinnoh each correspond to regions of Japan. Unova and Alola map to New York and Hawaii respectively, and Kalos resembles France. There were other regions as well, introduced in the spin off games, but they weren’t important for our purposes. That being, finding a legendary pokemon.

So that meant, if we wanted to stay within the United State, we needed to look at the Alolan and Unovan pokédexes for inspiration.

Relatively speaking, they were jam-packed, especially if you counted the ultra beasts. (We didn’t.) But since we couldn’t afford to go to Hawaii, that meant the Unovan legendaries were our best bet.

If we wanted to be reactive, our best bet was to wait another month until tornado season and go chasing thunderstorms in the hopes of finding Thundurus or Tornadus. We didn’t plan be reactive, however, and after living in the Midwest our whole lives, we didn’t feel like confining our road trip to it.

That left the Swords of Justice (Virizion, Terrakion, and Cobalion) with “known” locations. That is, fixed places they appeared in the video games, that we could (hopefully) correspond to real-life locations. They weren’t exactly A-List legendaries, but we figured that just meant we’d have less competition looking for them.

The tricky part was, they each had two different locations, depending on whether you played the original Black & White games, or the sequels.

More dedicated hunters would have tried to find equivalents for both. But seeing as we didn’t even know if the legendaries existed, we didn’t want to waste time going down every highway on the east coast. (And anyways, if that’s where the legendaries were going to show up, someone else would find them first.)

So that just left three places to find equivalents for: Mistralton Cave, Victory Road, and Pinwheel forest.

Of course, that was a long way in the future. Starting from Omaha, Nebraska, we had several days before we reached the east coast. In the meantime, a more pressing concern was entertaining ourselves through the monotony of Iowa cornfields.

This was easier done than said, albeit perhaps for the wrong reasons.

“Ready?” I ask. When no response comes, I bang twice on the roof of the van.

I get two thumps back.

“Feeding line!”

One paw stays on the steering wheel. The other begins unspooling rope. The rope goes through the passenger side window, and then upwards.

I hear Richie’s claws disengaging from the roof of the van.

I look in the rearview mirror, more than a little worried.

A few seconds pass, and then Richie starts whooping, exhilarated.

I laugh. At the top of my lungs, I yell “How’s the weather up there!?” I’ve been waiting days to use that one; long-delayed payback for middle-school teasing.

His response comes loud and clear, the sonic abilities of his species handily trouncing the wind’s attempt to drown him out. “Great! The farther away from you I get, the better it is.”

Touché.

“Gimme some more line!”

I do. Ten, then twenty, then thirty feet of rope. I can finally see him in the rearview mirror, an enormous purple kite attached inexpertly to the van.

I’m soon out of the range where I can talk to him. The reverse isn’t true, and he gives me a constant stream of unwanted commentary.

“To the west, corn! To the east, corn! In all directions, corn! Inside men’s hearts, corn! All we are, in the end, is corn! The mark of a successful society is how successfully it can farm this pernicious vegetable--”

“It’s a cereal grain, not a vegetable, you idiot,” I mutter. I know he knows, and he knows I know he knows. He’s intentionally getting it wrong to fuck with me. Okay, I’ve been a little anal-retentive about this kind of stuff since I started my Agronomy major. So sue me.

“From the Japanese to the ancient Babylonians, all great empires have sacrificed their children at the altar of-- COP CAR AHEAD”

My heart leaps into my throat, and I almost slam on the brakes. Luckily for Richie, I keep my presence of mind and slow down more gradually. By the time I pass the cop car, I’m down to 90 miles an hour, an almost reasonable speed.

My efforts don’t stop red and blue lights from appearing in my rearview mirror, as the police car roars out from its niche on the side of the highway.

By the time I stop completely, I’m hyperventilating. Unbidden memories rise of another set of red and blue lights, and a leg bent in completely the wrong direction.

Richie lands next to the car, respooled rope in his claws.

The policeman approaches us. She’s a Glaceon, a light blue fox with dark blue ‘hair’ on top of its head. Small, even for an eeveelution, I find myself wondering how she even manages to drive her vehicle.

There’s no perceivable hesitation in her step, which I suppose makes sense. We might be bigger than him, but Richie has a double weakness to ice. Meanwhile, I’m not exactly in the best frame of mind to start a fight, even if I wanted to.

“Hello, officer--” begins Richie.

“Do you have any idea how fast you were going?” interrupts the officer in a deep, contralto voice.

Richie makes a show of looking around. “Unfortunately not. I seem to be missing my speedometer.”

This startles a laugh out of the police officer.

“That may be the case, but I hope he can find his.”

This last part is directed as me. I nod meekly.

The officer sighs. “Look, I know there’s barely anyone else on the road right now, but the speed you’re driving at is just unsafe.” She looks at Richie. “And I don’t know what they hell  _ you’re  _ doing, but I doubt the FAA would be happy about it. So please, reign it in.”

“Yes, ma’am,” we reply in tandem. I’m significantly quieter than Richie.

She sighs. “Alright. I’m going to let you two off with a warning this time, but just keep what I said in mind, OK?” Then she’s back off to her car, not waiting for our thanks.

After that, I stick exactly to the speed limit, no matter how much Richie cajoles me to go faster. It was more than a little demoralizing. For the first time in years, I’d finally felt like taking risks, and this early on in the trip, I was already getting in trouble for it.

~oOo~

We had originally planned to refill on gas a little before Des Moines, then detour around the city. But the gas stations just off the highway are closed more often than not, and we’re forced to stop in the outskirts.

We finally find a gas station that’s operational. The neighborhood is totally desolate except for us. It really shouldn’t be, on a weekend afternoon as beautiful as this one. The city is still in mourning.

The skyline, modest though it is, still bears the scars of yesterday’s rioting. A police helicopter flies past cracked glass and burnt concrete. It’s accompanied by a Charizard, hastily spray-painted olive drab.

~oOo~

We make another pit stop in the vicinity of Iowa City, but the remainder of our trip through Iowa is largely uneventful, save for a few day-old car crashes we need to navigate around.

At least, until we get to the Mississippi.

The bridge is intact, but we balk at the idea of driving over it.

Our van putters to a stop.

In front of us is a Wailord.

“Yup, that’s a Wailord,” comments Richie.

I’ve seen blue whales in museums before, hung from the ceiling or on enormous, pride-of-place displays in the center of vast galleries. This wailord is only about half as long, which is still long enough to entirely block the bridge.

A Machamp steps out in front of us. Both sets of hands are steepled in front of him, and there’s an irritatingly smug expression on his face.

“Five bucks to pass.”

“What the hell?” says Richie.

“That is  _ literally _ highway robbery,” I remark.

The Machamp shrugs. Having two sets of shoulders accents the motion.

“A man’s gotta eat. Either you hand over the money and I’ll lift my associate here out of your way, or you can add another twenty minutes to your trip by detouring to another bridge.”

“Or we could call the cops,” Richie threatens.

The Machamp scoffs. “Go for it; the 911 operators still aren’t working.”

We stew on that, for a little bit. The Machamp waits patiently.

“Fuck it,” I growl, and turn the van around.

Twenty minutes later, in front of another bridge, our path is blocked by a Steelix. The enormous steel snake has coiled itself around the concrete structure.

I groan as I slow the van to a stop. Taking out my wallet, I pull out a one dollar bill and a five dollar bill. I memorize how the 5 dollar bill looks, then put it back.

“Five bucks to pass,” squawks a chatot. I hand him the one dollar bill. It won’t stand up to close inspection, but I don’t plan to stick around.

The steelix moves out of our way.

Afterwards, I stew on what happened.

“Cheer up, man. I got it all on camera.” Richie taps his gopro with one wing. “They’ll get what’s coming to then eventually.”

“Where’s you get that, anyways? I indicate towards the camera.”

“It’s been sitting in a box since last christmas. Never had a reason to use it.”

“Huh.”

My mood doesn’t take too long to clear up, after that.

~oOo~

Another car zips past us, going in the opposite direction. An Arcanine races behind it, leaving fiery footprints and burnt asphalt in its wake.

~oOo~

When we settle down for the night, it’s deep into Illinois, on the side of the road off a desolate highway exit.

Richie rolls out the blankets, while I focus on making my most difficult illusion yet.

I add scratches and discolorations to the van’s paint job. Blotches of rust and chipped paint. The two tires that face the road no longer seem to be there.

When that’s finished, we hook up our electric camping stove to the battery we’ve been charging all day using solar panels placed on top of the van.

Our beans are lukewarm at best, but as I lay on my back and watch the sunset, it’s the most satisfying meal I’ve ever had.

~oOo~

My parents send me a voicemail sometime during the night. My dad is encouraging, my mom worried. I send them one back.

Richie gets a text message from his sister. He frowns when he sees it.

~oOo~

The video is grainy, but not blurry.

Instant ramen cups are scattered around the room. The waste bin is filled to overflowing with energy drinks.

A figure hunches over a table, furiously drawing

The speaker is Japanese, but some fan has taken the trouble of subtitling the video in English.

“--So since I’m writing a slice of life manga set in what is at least nominally the ‘real world,’ I was completely at a loss for what to do for my next chapter,” says the artist. He’s an emolga-- a diminutive rodent that resembles a flying squirrel. He’s nude, aside from his signature ‘Hanshin Tigers’ baseball cap.

“Some of my colleagues have decided to keep going like before, reasoning that since the real world is insane, it’s actually more realistic to have everyone stay humans. But not I!”

With a flourish, the artist displays his work.

It’s a sketch, black and white. Six characters, three views each. Front view, back view, and three-quarters headshot. Each one is labeled with a name.

For comparison, the artist holds up an older picture, a glossy, full-color print.

The difference between the two is stark. The older work features humans; the newer one features Pokémon.

But there are similarities, too. The author has made a more than fair attempt to translate each of the characters into their new bodies. The leading man, distinctive for his sharp eyes and thick glasses, has become a glowering Pancham. The dark, panda-like rings around his eyes playing the part of his eyewear. The leading woman, with her dyed-blond curly hair and kitschy earrings, has become an Amaura, the same open, trusting smile on the dinosaur as on the girl.

“To my wonderful fans, thank you for your support! As long as I am able, I will continue working hard to draw a warm, happy world that everyone can smile in!”


	6. The Change - 4

“Just FYI, your illusion fell off as soon as you fell asleep,” says Richie.

“Huh.”

Richie’s driving today, which leaves me free to experiment with my new abilities. So far, I’ve only been able to spin up convincing illusions on 2D surfaces.

I have several pictures arrayed in front of me: printouts of photographs taken throughout my years of high school and college. Some show me at school events, others show me camping with my family (and occasionally Richie.) In each picture, I stand as straight as I can manage, hands and cane hidden behind my back.

Which is frustrating, because right now I’m trying to recreate my hands.

I can see why artists always complain about drawing them. I’m having a devil of the time crafting realistic illusions.

There’s a dull roaring behind us as a low-slung motorcycle speeds past us to our left. Then it seems to change its mind, brake light flashing as it slows down to match our speed.

On it is a small figure, wearing a fluttery white dress and a motorcycle helmet. I have to do a double take before realizing she’s not a human, but a Kirlia.

The Kirlia pulls out some sort of flyer, waving it just outside our window.

Richie and I trade confused glances.

“I don’t trust this,” he says.

“You don’t trust anyone,” I rebut.

Honestly, I’m a little weirded out too, but I proposed this road trip because I finally felt like getting out of my comfort zone. Retreating only a day in would be a waste.

“C’mon, roll down the window.”

Grumbling, he does.

The Kirlia carefully lines up with the window, then throws in the flyer.

With a purple flash, barely indistinguishable in the bright sunlight, She disappears, taking the dull roar of the motorcycle with her.

I grab the flyer and take a look.

“Blade Runner Pizza Delivery: Serving Chicago, Springfield, Davenport, Minneapolis, and other midwestern cities.  _ Visit our website for full list of locations _ .”

“Pizza in 15 minutes or  _ we  _ pay  _ you _ !”

~oOo~

“Hey Richie, have you noticed how we can just instantly tell the gender of anyone we’re looking at, even though nobody’s human anymore?”

“I had very carefully avoided noticing that, actually.”

~oOo~

Our last stop before Chicago is in a small town called Rochelle.

The highway exit could have been anywhere in the midwest; a gas station right next to a cornfield, with low-slung buildings all along the road.

The street is packed with semi trucks, but none are mobile. Instead, they line the shoulder of the road. Some have been overturned, but by and large they seemed to be there on purpose.

A gaggle of people, perhaps two hundred, are congregated in a soybean field just outside the gas station. Richie flies over to see what’s going on while I fill up the van.

He comes back as I’m screwing the gas cap back in.

“So, what’s going on?”

“You notice the trucks we saw coming in?”

“No, I’m blind and brain damaged.”

“I’d always suspected.” Richie nodded sagely. “Anyways, the day of-- the day we turned into Pokémon, obviously lots of people were panicking, which lead to far fewer crashes than it should have, but more than enough to get the police department to pull people off the roads.”

“All the people over there--” he indicates towards the congregation by pointing his nose, a new habit he was picking up, “--are the truckers and motorists stranded two days ago. Or at least, the ones who couldn’t or wouldn’t drive, run, or fly back home. They’ve been teleporting or flying them back home, but it’s slow going.”

“Huh.”

As Richie gets in and turns the key, I screw up my courage and say, “We should see if any of them are going towards Chicago.”

“Really?” Richie asks, frowning. He hesitates for while before giving an answer, chewing it over. Then he shrugs. “Sure, Okay.”

We’re both silent for a little bit, staring each other down.

Meekly, I ask him. “Can you do it?”

“Oh for the love of--” He rolls his eyes. “Fine.”

He turns the van off, goes through the rigamarole of taking off his seat belt (which was very much not designed for someone with wings), leaves the van, and flies over.

I’m more than a little embarrassed to ask him to do that for me, but he’s always been the more outgoing of the two of us. Even before my accident.

He claimed he was just inherently a more sociable person. I suspected it was because he’d always had to seek validation from people he wasn’t related to.   
Richie returns with a Gastrodon; a three foot tall blue and green sea slug. I could immediately understand why it had been stranded; there was no way it would be driving a truck anytime soon.

It’s nude except for a backpack, possibly filled with personal effects.

“I’m mighty glad you folks were here to help me out; I was pretty far back in the line,” the Gastrodon says. “Anyway’s, th’ name’s Cedar.”

“I’m Richie.”

I mutter my own name sotto voce. Cedar doesn’t ask me to repeat myself, which I’m grateful for.

Cedar nestles down on the pile of stuff we’d fit in the back of the van. We’re briefly stumped by how to belt Cedar in, but then Cedar reveals its mastery of the Sticky Hold ability and we leave it alone.

About fifteen minutes into our ride, my curiosity is too overwhelming to leave alone, so I break the awkward silence the van had previously fallen into.

“Hey Cedar, I’m really sorry if this comes across as rude or insensitive, but--”

“It’s the hermaphroditism, isn’t it?” Cedar says this casually, not seeming to take any offense.

“Hermaphroditism?”

“Yup.” I see Cedar nod in the mirror of my sun visor. I contort to look backwards; this line of questioning was going to get personal enough it felt rude not to look it in the face. “Slugs are hermaphrodites,” it adds, just as nonchalant as before.

“And are you-- uh, OK with that?”

“Yep. More than OK, actually. I miss m’ human body, but this’s an improvement, any way I look at it.”

“Huh.”

“Y’know, I’m not sure if this is related, but I’ve been feeling something sort of similar.” I turn to look at Richie, who’s still thankfully focused on the road. “Like, I don’t think I’d have chosen to turn into a pokemon of my own volition, but if I have to be a Pokémon, a Noivern isn't such a bad one to be. Flying is pretty neat.”

“Yeah, I totally get that, actually” I say. “Zoroark is part of a really small pool of Pokémon I’d have been OK with turning into.”

This breaks the ice, and we’re soon comparing our experiences since the mass transformation.

“Oh! I know! Show him the video; the one I took yesterday when I was roleplaying being a kite!”

I do. My own, tinny voice comes out of the laptop, muffled by the wind.

_ “Feeding line!” _

I hadn’t seen the video before, and it’s fascinating to watch it from Richie’s perspective. It’s a little like watching the takeoff of a jetliner, but instead of doing it through the lens of a fixed, static porthole, Richie turns and maneuvers freely as the corn fields blur into each other and become solid rows of green, neatly arranged.

Cedar oohs and aahs at the appropriate moment, and is generally very appreciative. It’s gratifying.

When we get to the part where Richie spots the cop car, Cedar belts out an uninhibited belly laugh. I can barely remember the panic I’d felt at the time; even though only a day has passed, the event already seems to take on the aura of nostalgia.

“Boy, it sure does sound like you’ve been on an adventure already. Where did you guys say was your destination?”

“New York,” we reply in tandem. “We’re hunting for a legendary,” I add.

“Which one?”

“Whichever,” responds Richie. “We’re not picky.”

“Well, good luck! I’d love some answers m’self.”

We talk some more about we’re we’ve been and were we’re going.

Later, Cedar relates one of its own stories.

“See, this guy’s just utterly hysterical. We’re all trying to calm him down, ‘cuz, y’know, we get it-- shit’s crazy. Even after a good night’s sleep, shit’s crazy. We all emphasized. Empathized? Empathized.”

“And let me just emphasize again, he’s  _ big _ . There was actually another guy, same species, also waiting for a teleport. They’re both loch-ness-monster lookin’ fellas, they both had this trailer-bed wide shell on their backs, but the guy I’m talkin’ about is at least twice as round as the other one. Eighteen doughnuts stuffed into a twelve donut box, if you catch my drift.”

“So we’re all utterly at a loss for how to calm him down. Completely out of ideas. And then I get the bright idea to just ask him why he’s so hysterical. See, we’d all just assumed he was angry at being turned into-- y’know-- the loch ness monster, but it turns out, that wasn’t exactly the problem.”

“The entire reason the guy’s so distraught is, get this, because he thinks the missus will go absolutely nuclear on him when she finds out how much weight he’s gained.”

I laugh, and so does Richie.

There’s laugher in Cedar’s voice too, as he continues. “Now, fair enough, he’s probably put on a few pounds. Turnin’ into a dinosaur’ll do that to ya. But man, considerin’ how much she’d have had to feed him to turn him into such a lardball in the first place, it’s probably a safe bet the missus prob’ly liked a bit of meat on his bones. A little bit more wouldn’t be any more distractin’ than having four flippers and twice the number of horns.”

~oOo~

We eventually drop off Cedar in Platteville, a village a while away from Chicago proper. He’d made Richie promise to start uploading the videos he’s taken as a sort of informal documentary of our travels, so we mooch off his home wifi to get a youtube channel started.

We meet Cedar’s partner, an Azumarill. To the joint surprise of me and Richie, the rotund aquatic rabbit is golden, instead of blue. She explains that she was melanistic before the event.

Cedar tells us to show her the same video we’d shown him. The third time through, I notice something interesting in the background-- someone’s flying, far to the south. Their figure is barely visible, an indistinct red-orange blob. It streaks across the screen in the matter of seconds. A Charizard? No, Charizards didn’t fly that fast. Maybe it was a single-engine plane, a crop duster or small transport.

We stay for about an hour. When we leave, it’s with bellies full of warm food, and hearts full of warm thank-yous.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This concludes the chapters I'd written for "The Change." Next: sengoku-punk.


	7. An Age of Steel and Clay - 1

Blood freely mixed with tears and mucus as it dripped from Arcanine’s face.

Still, the warrior rose for one last time.

Only a few, cracked plates of ceramic still covered his body. The rest of his armor was strewn around the forest. The armored spikes that had once adorned him had been chipped away. Three corpses lay in front of him, charred and blackened, but one enemy still stood.

The Espeon in front of him was diminutive, a small purple fox with a forked tail. But where Arcanine had been worn down over the course of days, the Espeon looked like he was fresh from a bath house. Even the mud of the water-soaked road seemed to avoid the psychic.

Arcanine roared, a deep bass rumble speaking rage and hatred.

Espeon bowed his head in acknowledgment.

Arcanine took a slow, agonized step forward, like lifting his paw was the hardest task he’d ever performed.

A motion-- nearly imperceptible. The espeon tilted his head, and a tree branch whipped through the forest to pierced into Arcanine’s side.

Still, Arcanine advanced. A red dot appeared in his mouth. More tree branches pierced his sides, but he seemed to ignore them, intent on his purpose.

The orb grew, first to the size of a cherry, and then to the size of an orange.

The espeon took a step back, even as his psychic power made the forest swirl around him like they stood in the middle of a hurricane, rather than a bright, pleasant day without a cloud in the sky.

The Arcanine’s wounds bled freely, each one certainly fatal. He tilted his head back, the final precursor to his attack.

A branch pierced him through the throat.

The Arcanine fell, the fire in his maw sputtering out.

The forest went silent, except for the pathetic mewling of a Growlithe-- the Arcanine’s pup.

The Espeon stepped forward, as if to double check that the Arcanine was dead. He was. Already, his eyes grew glassy, and his body cooled from the enormous temperatures his breed could sustain while alive.

Then, the Espeon turned his attention to the Growlithe.

A puppy, barely four years old. Dressed in what had once been a fine silk vest, and was now, courtesy of furious travel, nothing more than a mud-stained rag.

The Growlithe cried in terror and sorrow. Then, to her surprise, the Espeon smiled. It was not a malicious smile; it did not portend any evil. It was a kind smile, completely open, and perhaps it was even empathetic, in the Espeon’s own, meagre way.

“I mean you no harm, little one. Be at peace. I killed your father, but I had no enmity towards him, and I hold none towards you. He died a magnificent death, and I would honor that by taking you into my own home.”

Had anyone else been there to see it, the scene would have been almost perverse. A killer, comforting the daughter of the man he had murdered.

~oOo~

I swore under my breath as I dodged. Each narrowly-avoided stone merited another curse.

Every unavoided stone resulted in a wince on my part, and a tiny, smug smile on Uncle’s part.

I’d been getting better, but I still wasn’t good enough.

Eventually the training session ended, and I limped off, battered and bruised. I had only two saving graces-- that my fur was thick, and would hide the bruises at the formal dinner Uncle would be hosting later today, and that Uncle followed the eastern traditions, rather than the western. Bamboo mats were much more pleasant to sit on for hours on end than hardwood, especially when Uncle had hit my behind with a real doozy of a throw earlier today.

The servants bowed as I passed, a duck of the head and a raised forepaw below their chins. They were predominantly Eevee and Vulpix, pretty fox-girls one and all, catering to Uncle’s tastes. Mature women in their own right, but none had gathered the experience, whether in life or in combat, to evolve.

Art adorned the walls. Elegantly, but perhaps not tastefully. Woodland scenes in black ink on tapestries were interspersed with extravagant paintings in the western style of scenes of battle and orgies and grand debates. In one painting, dragon-kings of the land of sunset held court before a throng of bespectacled bureaucrats. In another, Infernape fought as their republic burned around them.

I paid my quick, quiet respects to the shrine I had for my father as I passed it. A scrap of fur, a spike of ceramic, long-faded memories, and Uncle’s stories were all I had left of him.

Two sigils adorned the entrance to the bath, one to the left, and one to the right. Uncle’s sigil was an eye with a triskelion for a pupil. Mine, a sun contained within a triangle.

A servant informed me that my bath had already been drawn to my usual specifications. I thanked her, and entered the room.

After shedding my harness and weights, I eased myself into the baths.

For a few minutes, I luxuriated in the heat of the boiling water and billowing fire. Then, with a sigh, I set myself to the business of making myself presentable.

With the ceramic comb built into the side of the tub, I removed all the knots from my fur. With shampoos and oils, I made it shiny and lustrous, so that it gleamed in the dull light of the flames. Perfume I used only sparingly; it had been imported at great expense by the amphibious merchants that occasionally swam this far inland, and it would be months, if not years, before they ventured here again.

Finally, I was ready. An effete princess might have chosen to apply makeup and dyes, but I felt that I had made enough concessions towards femininity. After all, I was first and foremost a warrior.

My formal wear reflected that; my vest was dyed a light hazelnut brown, reminiscent of the armor all fire-type warriors wore. My sash was silver, to bring to mind the blades that were the hallmark of my Uncle’s fighting style. (At least, when he wasn’t fighting fire types.)

The sashes that I tied around each paw were green. These were a concession to modern fashions, and nothing more.

Finally, I was ready.

My bruises still stung, somewhat, but I held my head high as I entered the room.

I sat down just in time. Almost as soon as I had made myself comfortable, the bamboo doors opened, revealing the woman I hated most in the world.

The servants bowed as low as they could, heads to the floor. The Marowak entered the room with precise, mincing steps. She wore a beautiful summer kimono, adorned with butterfree and beautifly. But as the saying went, you couldn’t put lipstick on a tepig.

Her bone mask was covered in scars, some minor, some major. Like the scorch mark that surrounded one of her eye holes and the gaping ruin of flesh underneath.

Uncle had been the instrument of my father’s death. But the woman before me had composed the symphony of his demise. Taiga of house Karen.

My liege lady.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally written to be a quest on Sufficent Velocity, before I got writer's block. I've experimented with turning it into an ordinary narritive because I really like some of the worldbuilding I did, but can't do anything beyond abortive attempts to write a Chapter 3.


	8. An Age of Steel and Clay - 2

“Espeon, of house Kosa.”

“Growlithe, of house  Solnechnaya.”

Uncle and I bowed. I did so in perhaps a more perfunctory method than was polite.

“We live to serve. We die at your behest.”

I stumbled on this part of the greeting. Partially because I didn’t really believe what was coming out of my mouth, but mostly because I’d used it so rarely. Taiga didn’t venture to our hall often, preferring to spend the bulk of her time politicking in the capital or intimidating the neighboring countries.

Taiga reciprocated our bows. “It’s been too long, Umbreon.”

We sat. I was to Uncle’s right, and both of us were directly across from Taiga. Between us, a bamboo mat served as our table. (Here, I’m a little annoyed that Uncle followed the eastern traditions. I personally took my meals from an elevated wooden platform.)

Almost immediately, servants bustled in with platters of food tied to their backs.

Uncle levitated the platters off the servants, before dismissing them.

We ate before talking, as etiquette dictated. Uncle and I crunched through roasted beetle topped with pillbug puree. Taiga’s plate was dominated by a leafy salad with still-alive caterpillars and mealworms on it. Gross.

We finished eating, and the business of the evening finally began.

“On my journey here, I noticed the banks of the river were overflowing. Have you been having any troubles with flooding?”

Or at least the small talk portion of the evening began. Bleh. I zoned out, bored, as Taiga and Uncle talked about the weather, grain prices, commoner unrest near the capital, and in general topics that I knew were important, but had no interest in. I did pay attention to her quick remarks about our nation’s foreign stance, though.

“We still have a significant lead in military forces, but it isn’t as big as it once was. Revanchist elements in the bordering states may prove a problem if they decide to form a coalition, but I very much doubt that gaggle of backstabbing incompetents will manage to pose a threat to us any time within the next two decades or so.”

Finally, she got to the part I was interested in.

“.. and that brings me to why I’m here.”

(“And here I thought you just wanted to gossip,” I grumbled, not quite under my breath. This got me a sharp look from Uncle.)

Taiga laughed; a peculiar whistling noise filtered through the exposed bone of her skull plates.

“You have spirit. I like that in my soldiers.”

I couldn’t help but think that her smile looked more like a rictus grin than anything containing a semblance of warmth.

“Tell me, Growlithe. What do you know about court politics?”

“Enough.”

“Don’t play dumb. It isn’t becoming of you,” scolded Taiga.

The silence stretched on awkwardly, until I broke down and gave her what she wanted.

“Well… starting from the top, King Yuuto of--”

“Stop,” ordered Taiga. “I can already tell you’re gearing up to give me the same asinine spiel any commoner could tell me about our nation. What do you know about the current conflict? And don’t make me ask you a third time. I can tolerate a bit of spirit, but I absolutely cannot tolerate rebellion.”

Sufficiently cowed, I began again. “There are three major factions competing over the succession. The most powerful faction is the moderate faction, mainly composed of sub-kings like yourself, that support the king’s daughter, who’s set to succeed under current elective and successive law. They win if the status quo holds. The most numerous faction is the ‘republican’ faction. They want to change elective and succession laws to both enfranchise high lords and allow them to be elected king. If they succeed, Ursaring of house Zvezda is by far the clear favorite to win the succession election on the King’s death. Obviously high lords tend to flock to their banner, but they also have support from the three matriarchs, because high lords tend to be a little less cynical and a lot more religious than sub-kings, as a rule.

After a moment of though, I amended my statement. “There’s also the royalists, who support the king’s son, and want to change the succession law to… I paused here, trying to remember the term. “Primogeniture? To guarantee the monarch’s firstborn always inherits. I don’t think anyone believes they’ll get their way, though. Obviously they’re packed with the prince’s direct vassals, friends, and toadies. And there’s also a bunch of minor factions and holdouts that haven’t been swayed into joining the main parties yet, but the sicker the king gets, the fewer of those there are.”

Taiga nodded. “A reasonably accurate, if rather bland depiction of what’s going on. So tell me. What faction am I in?”

I didn’t have to give this question any thought.

“Your own.”

Taiga gave me a calculated look. “Perhaps you aren’t as dense as you look. Who do I support, then?”

Again, I already knew the answer. The way she’d spent thirty years consolidating her power, ensuring completely loyalty from her vassals, and establishing a reputation as an utterly ruthless and utterly pragmatic political and military operator pointed towards only one thing-- a bid for the throne.

Of course, she couldn’t propose herself as the successor. She was too old, at this point. The entire reason we’d adopted an elective monarchy was that a chain of short-lived rulers had nearly shattered our nation. We would only accept a ruler young enough to grow into their position, healthy enough to not fall sick and die, and politically well connected enough to avoid getting assassinated and throwing the realm into turmoil.

But that just prevented her from  _ directly _ assuming the crown. An indirect method was also available.

“You plan to support your son’s bid for the throne,” I said, confidently.

Taiga looked surprised. I almost grinned at her expression.

And then she started laughing. Not the restrained whistle of earlier, but a full-on belly laugh. Uncle smirked. They knew something I didn’t.

“My son? That simpering, limp wristed homosexual? He couldn’t even handle being on top of another man, much less a country.” Taiga snorted, derisive. “But I suppose I can’t blame an inexperienced puppy for coming to that conclusion. In fact, I should be thankful that my efforts to hide my familial shame have worked so well.”

“You’re welcome,” interjected Uncle.

“Then, who do you support?” I forced myself to ask.

“That’s my business, not yours. But,” she added, “I can tell you who I oppose.” The levity slipped out of her tone. “The moderates and the republicans? They play by the rules. Liege and vassal divide themselves across political lines, but it remains a merely diplomatic war of favor trading and influence. The royalists, however, are largely disjunct from the other factions, and united against all outsiders.”

Taiga let that sink in for a moment. “I fear civil war.” Blunt, to the point. The hallmark of all her most famous statements.

I felt a pit in my stomach. My instinctual reaction was to reject what she was saying. After all, the enemy of an enemy was a friend, right?

She continued, heedless of my internal turmoil. “Now, there is hope. I can’t dismantle them outright. They have too much power, in the aggregate. But I don’t need to. I just need to keep them from reaching the tipping point, where they think they can win a war, long enough for one of the two main factions to gain an obvious lead. To that end, I need to strike at their fundamentals of their power base. What do you think of the current king’s reputation?”

At first, her last sentence seemed like a non-sequitur. But then I realized where her line of questioning was heading. “He’s incredibly popular. He’s expanded our borders, he’s fought off invaders, he’s staved off famines and built roads across the entire length and breadth of our nation. He’s known for always having time to listen to the woes of the commoners, and for works of charity and gestures of solidarity. The power base of the royalist faction is.. the common folk?” I screwed my face up. I’d made an intuitive leap that I knew was accurate, but couldn’t justify.

Taiga saw my consternation, and finished my thought for me. “The king’s daughter is a master at intrigue and diplomacy, and competent at military and administrative manners besides. But she doesn’t have her father’s head for manipulating the hearts of the common folk. And while Ursaring is renowned across the land for his personal heroics and success on the battlefield, he has very little experience transferable to managing the affairs of a nation. His personal holdings are left in the grasp of a competent steward, and he has a very light paw in their management.”

“Some would say that delegation is one of a ruler’s most important skills,” Uncle said, as a playful aside. His management strategy wasn’t quite as laissez faire, but he too preferred to have a lighter paw over the management of his borough.

“Regardless, while he receives unquestioned support from many of the military-minded lords of our nation, common folk are not so sure he should be king. But while the prince has inherited no particular administrative, military, or diplomatic capability, his silver tongue perhaps surpasses that of any ruler since the Founder. And using it, he’s claimed to be the inheritor of his father’s best qualities, as the child that knew him for longest.”

Taiga sniffed dismissively. Obviously, she didn’t agree with that notion.

“It’s an appealing argument. We use the same one, or variants thereof, to justify the familial inheritance of all titles besides that of king to the common folk. That blood is necessary and sufficient to carry on a legacy. It’s a convenient lie.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but quelled my words at a sharp look from Uncle. But still, how could she not believe in such a foundational element of our nation? Every person in this room was here because the nation recognized that bloodlines were the most reliable way to determine whether a child would grow into greatness or mediocrity. They weren’t a perfectly reliable indicator, of course, but if bloodlines were ignored, all three of us would probably be wasted on farming dirt or herding insects.

“But no matter how loud he yells, the prince cannot reach every commoner in the realm by himself. So he employs a network of rabble rousers to do his work for him. And irritatingly enough, he seems to think he can send them wherever he likes, including my demesne.”

Taiga withdrew a piece of paper from her sleeves. “This contains four names. I expect to see a matching number of heads, sans body, within the month. Each name corresponds to an agent of the prince.”

Then, to my surprise, she handed the paper to me, rather than my uncle. I bit down carefully on the delicate paper, and inserted it into a pocket on my vest.

“I can see what you’re thinking. And it’s true-- initially, I planned to give this assignment to your uncle. But I realized, during this conversation, that perhaps I could make better use of my resources. You’re something of an unknown quantity. Espeon vouches for you, which carries weight, but I remember what your father did, and I stayed my hand from executing you only because your guardian personally guaranteed your future loyalty. This will give you a chance to prove yourself.”

“I-- I understand.” I muttered.

Taiga nodded. “Chin up. I won’t force you to do this for free-- although that would be well within my rights.” A pointed reminder of where we stood. “I have a fire stone that’s recently finished its recharging cycle. Should you succeed at your task, you will be allowed to use it.”

I blinked. I didn’t know how to process that. Dull anger warred with hope.

“My retinue is quartered in the barracks. Choose two of them to accompany you. They will aid you in your task and keep an eye on you. They will also have the execution warrants and descriptions for your targets, as well as money to pay for traveling accommodations and other necessities and contingencies. Go.”

A little disbelieving at her sudden, curt dismissal, I got up. Bruises I had forgotten about in the heat of our discussion once again became noticeable, and I had to suppress a wince.

~oOo~

The trip to the barracks was brief, but gave me enough time to read the sheet and process my orders. None of the names were familiar to me, which was good, but I understood what she was doing. Forcing me to bloody my paws at her behest; the start of a pattern. Plus, this would tie my reputation with hers. I’d permanently be making enemies with everyone in the royalist faction, cutting myself off from people I potentially had a common enemy with.

But I had no way to refuse. I wasn’t strong enough to flout legal orders. My father hadn’t been, either.

Regardless, by the time I reached the dormitory, I was in a poor mood.

I opened the door.

Five soldiers were in the barracks. A Miltank and a Persian played cards. A Rhyhorn was reading a book, and a Kangaskhan whittled at a branch with her claws. On one of the beds, a Munchlax slept.

Everyone (save the Munchlax) flinched when I opened the door. A testament to Uncle’s stealth training.

They scrambled to salute me.

I sized them up without talking, forcing them to maintain their salutes.

Persian was recently evolved, perhaps a decade older than me. A southpaw, by the looks of it; his claws were duller on his left side. He had no armor on, and I didn’t see any that fit him.

I couldn’t tell Miltank’s age at a glance, although I could see that she hadn’t had any children yet. Her armor sat disassembled on one of the bunk beds, large plates of curved steel. On the same bed was what I assumed was her weapon, a halberd slightly taller than she was.

Rhyhorn, meanwhile, seemed to be younger than I was. Sixteen or seventeen years of age, if I had to guess. He didn’t have armor, and didn’t need it. The book he’d been reading was emblazoned “A Treatise on the Theoretical Construction of Flying Machines.”

Kangaskhan, meanwhile, seemed to be several decades older than me. From the stretch marks on her pouch to the wrinkles on her face, I could tell she’d had at least one, and perhaps several children.

Munchlax was still asleep.

None of them had any obvious scars, and none wore a captain’s sash, confirming my suspicions. The bulk of Taiga’s retinue must have purchased board at the town inn. She hadn’t brought her veterans. She’d brought minions for Uncle’s use, which translated to ablative armor, according to his doctrine. Not that these soldiers would have been told that was their purpose. (I felt a little bad for Kangaskhan’s family, knowing that.)

Still, it was concerning that she’d brought them at all-- she was expecting these rabble rousers to pose some sort of threat, even to Uncle.

As I completed my brief survey, I caught Rhydon’s eyes widening.

“Wait, you’re--” he gasped. “Holy Mew, I never thought I’d get a chance to work with the daughter of the Iron Boiler! My mother used to tell me about working under your father! I’ve heard so many stories about his unit’s work on the eastern campaign. It was a real shame about the treason.”

Rhydon smiled a goofy grin. I should have been annoyed at his flippant reference to my father, but I found him slightly endearing, to be honest. I immediately decided he would be coming with me.

That left me with just one more person to take.

I blinked once, slowly. Rhyhorn’s smile grew slightly uncomfortable. Then, I spoke.

“Taiga has a mission for me. I was told you had the documentation.”

My voice was carefully flat, both to maintain a professional aura and to avoid showing how much my bruises ached.

“Oh, uh--” Rhyhorn started, looking around wildly.

Kangaskhan produced a scroll of paper, and handed it to me. The wax seal holding it closed had the imprint of Taiga’s house emblem; a diamond, bisected vertically.

I nodded my thanks as I accepted it.

As I put the scroll into my vest pocket, I made a snap decision as to who the second member of my retinue would be. Maybe it was dumb, but I didn’t want to command people obviously older and more experienced than myself.

Looking back up, I said “Rhyhorn, Miltank, you’re temporarily being transferred into my retinue. I expect to see you by the main gates sunrise, tomorrow.”

I turned around, not bothering to look at their reactions. Today had been an extremely long day, and tomorrow would not be any better. As soon as I left the room, however, I had second thoughts. They were below my station, but they would still be my comrades.

But by then, it was too late. Showing indecision now would destroy any chance of them respecting my authority. Unbidden, the munchlax came to mind. I’d assumed he’d been sleeping, but perhaps he’d already judged me, and found me lacking.

I went to bed in pain, and in a bad mood. Apprehension about my first ever mission mixed with dull hatred for Taiga. And in there somewhere was hope-- that I’d succeed, and get to use a fire stone. That I’d get to experience a full evolution in the prime of my life, rather than wasting years, or even decades to mature fully.

But even that hope was tainted by suspicion. My family-- my biological family, that is, not Uncle-- had had a long and storied history. Even the decades-long decay of our power that had ended with my father had only served to consolidate our lands and wealth. But I had almost none of my birthright to call upon. The lands had been distributed among the commoners, the wealth seized by the crown, and possessions valuable in and of themselves distributed across Taiga’s supporters.

(Uncle had received his own portion of those possessions, but had kept it in trust for me. He was a murderer, not a thief.)

So the fact that Taiga dangled a single use of the fire stone as bait infuriated me, when in all likelihood the stone was rightfully mine.

Eventually, however, my exhaustion outweighed my anxiety and anger, and I fell into a fitful sleep.

~oOo~

A servant woke me an hour before dawn. I woke up blearily, and stumbled through my morning ablutions. With some embarrassment, I noted the scorch marks on my bedspread. At least I wouldn’t have to put up with yet another lecture about ruining Uncle’s furniture; I planned to be gone before the servants had a chance to inform him.

I read through my mission scroll as I ate my cricket porridge. (High in protein, low in taste.)

There were four people I needed to kill. “Fights Rivers” the Raticate, “Big Slow”, the Muk, “Lickililly” the Haunter, and a curious-looking foreigner: “Claude” the “Dewott.”

Taiga’s information was extremely limited-- a description, a drawing, a nickname, and a general location. The dewott was going to be my last target; I’d prefer some more experience before I took on what was obviously a water type. The other three were trickier to decide between, but eventually I decided to go for Haunter first. Her species was known for being slippery; the information on her location would be obsolete faster than anyone else’s, and then it would be a lot of extra work to track her down.

Thus decided, I got all my gear in order; my armor, some trail rations, a small purse, and various other essentials all went into my saddle bags.

I arrived at the gates precisely at daybreak. The early morning sunbeams stirred something within my soul, and for a moment, my anxiety fell away.

I smiled, fierce.

Rhyhorn and Miltank stood at attention. I gestured at them. “Let’s go.”

And we did.

A full description of my journey would be an exercise in tedium. We ran swift over the forest road, muddy and dusty by the time we stopped to rest for each night.

The road stuck close to the river, and we took our midday meals by its banks.

Occasionally, a fishing village or trading barge broke up the monotony, and we used them as opportunities to restock our rations and listen to gossip.

But eventually, we took a fork in the road that lead away from the river, and another, and another.

Four full days from the start of my mission, deep in the forest, we reached our destination.

Twilight City. Perpetually on the border between night and day.

Here, there were as many pokemon in the air as on the ground.

Many of those flying were birds: pidgeotto and noctowl. But others were bug types, and some were ghosts. It was obvious why the haunter, Lickililly, had chosen to come here.

We entered the city without our armor, but still we attracted furtive glances and naked staring. It must have been obvious, whether by our bearing, our gear, or something else, what we were here for.

I glanced around, momentarily lost. Low, squat buildings littered the forest floor, shops and businesses. In the tree branches were the tightly packed, conical homes of flying pokemon.

I sighed, then, suddenly feeling the effects of days of hard travel.

Reasserting control of myself, I strode confidently forward. “We’ll look for an inn, first. Then there’s a contact of Espeon’s I want to talk to.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thus concludes the content I had written for An Age of Steel And Clay.
> 
> Next: The Ingenious Gentleman, Don Quixote of La Mancha


	9. Don Lucario

Lucario eyed his erstwhile travelling companion somewhat dubiously. Tales of valor often had secondary characters to accompany the hero, true. And, after all, dramatic monologues were always better when given to an audience that could “ooh” and “aah” appreciatively at the right moments. But somehow, he’d always imagined he’d be trailed by a gorgeous gardevoir, or a stolid stoutland, or perhaps even a genteel grovyle.

In no case did he ever expect to be travelling alongside a bidoof.

But, in any case, perhaps the situation could be salvaged. Taking in the rounded face and poofy fur of his newfound compatriot, he found himself warming to his fellow pokemon. Yes, a “bawdy” bidoof would serve adequately, comedic relief from his own more sombre nobility.

“Sooo... are you going to say anything, or just stare at me? My name’s Sancho, by the way.”

The bidoof interrupted Lucario’s reverie, and he gasped, chagrined. He bowed as low as he could while still walking.

“My deepest apologies, good sir. I beg of you to forgive my transgressions against good manners.”

Sancho eyed him strangely, but nevertheless forgave him.

“Then, I will introduce myself: I am Lucario.”

“... Yeah. I mean, your name, not your species. Like, I’m a bidoof, but my name is Sancho.”

“Well, I am a lucario, and my name is Lucario.”

“Really?”

“Indeed. It is the custom of my people to name our children such, to serve as a reminder that the actions of one of us reflect on all of us.”

“But what did people call you when they needed you specifically, instead of any other lucario?”

“Dipshit.”

Sancho blinked. “I see.”

Lucario forcefully suppressed his memories of the judgemental, gossiping harpies that made up his village. He was on a capital H, capital Q Heroic Quest to defend good and strike down evil, and that meant he had, indeed, shown them all!

That perhaps sounded a little villainous, so as an afterthought, he appended “...the error of their ways” to his previous statement.

With a look of naked gratitude, he glanced at the one responsible for it all. In that moment, he wished for nothing more than the ability to convey his feelings to the human in their own native tongue.

Indeed, he would have to put all his mental faculties towards becoming conversant in the human tongue, to remove the need for bidoof-- for Sancho, that is-- to serve as an interlocutor.

He remembered their meeting like it had happened yesterday (although in truth, it had happened barely three hours ago.) Already, it took on the faded color of myth in his memories; how the human had asked (through Sancho) for his help in defeating this dastardly “Pokemon League” that so oppressed his people. How the human would teach Lucario the secrets of his people in return for Lucario’s assistance. How he had (through Sancho) zealously pledged himself to the human’s cause (only to later find out that Sancho merely understood human, and regrettably could not speak it). How their contract had been finalized through his entry into that fascinating globular device Sancho called a “pokeball.”

How--

A strangled noise escaped Lucario’s mouth as he tripped over an exposed roof.

Seeking to salvage the situation, he acted as if he had merely been bending down to inspect the nails of his paw.

Sancho did not comment on Lucario’s ignominious stumble, and Lucario was suffused with gratitude for his traveling companion. How he wished he could reprimand past-Lucario for his lack of faith in Lady Luck’s choice of traveling companions.

How loyal his comrades! How rosy the future looked!

This, he knew, was the true beginning of his story!

(This, he knew, meant that no one could ever scold him for daydreaming when he should have been harvesting orran berries again. Ha!)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know why I ever thought this premise was a good idea.
> 
> Next: ???


End file.
